School Leaders: Understand Your Investments

Often, I hear from school leaders about the investment in terms of finance that they have spent in creating the school infrastructure. And surprising part is that they think that is is the costliest investment they have made. I argue with them on this point and say that there are costlier investments than finance that they make every day. And when I start talking in terms of values and numbers, they get a shock of their life.

Yes; the two costlier investments than finance that a school leader makes are – Time and Team.
Gone are the days have gone where teachers’ B.Ed. degree and her experience would be sufficient to teach to student. Now, kind of skills that are expected to be groomed in students have changed drastically. To cater this, school needs teachers with those right skill-set which come at their own market value. If we don’t have the right teachers with right skill-set, then you as a school leader you would have to spend most of your time in hand-holding the teachers. This leaves almost no time to think about school growth. In such cases, the school operates only in survival mode and not in the growth mode.
Another pervading change is Teachers Attrition. The demand for good teachers is increasing and that has led to competitive job market. If the attrition calculation is made, then the cost of each teacher leaving the organisation is almost 200 % of her annual CTC. This means, if a teacher has 3.5L as her CTC, then the total cost to organization to get in her replacement would be6-7L based on the location and time. So, even 10-20% underperforming teachers or wrong hires in a school can create recurring loss of 20-40% of total operation budget. Just give a thought to these figures and you would realize the impact!Now a million dollar question – Are You Getting Right Returns on these investments?